The Democrat Stacey Abrams has acknowledged that the Republican Brian Kemp will be declared the next governor of Georgia, bringing to a close the hard-fought and bitterly contested election.

The race, in a state won comfortably by Donald Trump in 2016, had been too close to call since polls closed on Tuesday last week. Kemp had clung to a slim lead, staying just above the over 50% he needed to avoid a runoff election.

At a press conference on Friday evening, Abrams refused to call her acknowledgement of Kemp’s victory a concession, arguing that Kemp’s record as secretary of state, marred by widespread allegations of voter suppression, made it impossible.

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“I will not concede because the erosion of our democracy is not right,” she said.

“Let’s be clear, this is not a speech of concession. Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper,” she continued. “As a woman of conscience and faith I cannot concede that. But my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy.”

Kemp, a hardline conservative closely aligned with Donald Trump, had remained Georgia’s secretary of state overseeing elections throughout the campaign, prompting suggestions of a conflict of interest.

The Abrams campaign filed a lawsuit shortly after polls closed to push for election workers to have more time to count provisional and absentee ballots. But on Friday she acknowledged her campaign would bring no more litigation to contest the outcome of the vote.

Instead, during a speech loaded with criticism of her opponent, Abrams said she planned to file a federal lawsuit against the state over what she described as “the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections”.

She called on Kemp to ensure the protection of the vote as he became the state’s 83rd governor. “I will pray for the success of Brian Kemp, that he will indeed be a leader for all Georgians … that he will refuse the call of those who see how close this election really was. Because we know that some will propose to make voting even harder.”

Shortly after, Kemp issued a statement declaring the election was now over. “We can no longer dwell on the divisive politics of the past but must focus on Georgia’s bright and promising future,” he said.

The gubernatorial race in Georgia drew national attention throughout the midterm election cycle as Barack Obama and Donald Trump rallied for the candidates of their respective parties. The state, in America’s deep south, has not elected a Democratic governor since 1998 and had been seen as a potential bellwether of the strength of Democratic resistance to Republicans since the election of Donald Trump.

Abrams, who would have become America’s first African American female governor, led a grassroots, unabashedly progressive campaign and trailed Kemp by a razor-thin margin of less than 60,000 votes out of almost 4m ballots cast.

During his eight year tenure as Georgia’s secretary of state, Kemp drew criticism for backing controversial voting laws that critics said disproportionately affected black voters. His office also oversaw the purging of over 1.3m names from the electoral rolls.